The Changes Of Vietnam’s Wedding In Recent Seventy Years

The wedding is a kind of important social rituals, life style and national culture.Vietnam’s wedding is in common with other countries’ wedding, but also reflects thecharacteristics of its own. This research reveals the characteristics, factors andconsequences of Vietnam wedding changes, in the same time makes an outline of thebasic reasons of the Vietnamese wedding changes, for the time of recently seventyyears.This dissertation analyses the changes of Vietnam’s wedding from theperspective of sociology and used literature review to find the changes of Vietnamwedding in different historical periods, through the questionnaire method andinterview method, investigation and analysis of the changes of people’s attitude onwedding. The research obtained the following findings:Firstly, in4000years historical process, there were three stages in Vietnam’swedding changes. The first stage is the feudal era, Vietnam’s wedding included sixsteps: bringing offer present to the bride’s house, pre-betrothal ceremony, bringingwedding present to the bride’s house, promise ceremony, meeting the bride andbringing her to the broom’s house. The second stage: period of wars, there were onlysimple wedding ceremony; but in the economic subsiding system stage in the peaceera, the wedding process had returned to the feudal era but got rid of three steps thenkept three steps: plighting visit, betrothal ceremony and the wedding. The third stage,the present reform and open policy era, the wedding process of Vietnam retainedthree traditional steps: plighting visit, betrothal ceremony and the wedding, and alsoabsorbed the contemporary western wedding culture.Secondly, the ideas and contents of Vietnamese wedding had showed thediversified and individualized change trend, so the wedding culture has alsochanged. The conception of "suitable alliance" and "matchmaker diversification"embody the modern Vietnamese people pay more attention to pursuit their ownhappiness, pursuit free loveThirdly, Vietnam’s wedding process changes were caused by three major factors:history, economy and law. In the histotical perspective, Vietnam had received thelong-term influence of Chinese Confucian culture, the Western culture from theinvasion of France and the Vietnam War, and the period of reform and open policyalso. In the economic perspective, the Vietnamese economy turn from thefarming-civilization economy into war-era economy and the new economy after thereform and opening up, shaping the Vietnamese wedding from complicated steps of history to the removal and absorption epidemic factors of contemporary westernwedding culture, to form what is now Vietnam wedding culture. In the lawperspective, no matter in which era, Vietnam’s rulers had attached great importanceto the marriage and wedding administration then also tried to carry out thecorresponding legislation jobs.Finally, this dissertation also focused on the analyzing and evaluating of theresults of Vietnamese wedding changes in the context of modernity. ContemporaryVietnam’s wedding process changes presented the following five results: the biggerautonomy and choice right of individuals for wedding; the appearance ofprofessional wedding planning service; the gap between the rich and the poor inwedding banquet; the commercialization of wedding; and the heavier burden ofwedding.